Watch Dogs Wiki:Editing Policy
For a more in-depth description of the policies that can result in blocks if broken, see Blocking Policy. The following is a list of Editing Policies and Guidelines. All users, regardless of status and position, are expected to follow them. None of these policies are ever set in stone, however. Anyone who disagrees with a policy is welcome to suggest changes onto an admin's talk page or on the forum. Here is a listing of our policies. It is advised that users that witness a user violating policy do not get involved in resolving the situation on each case. Situations like edit wars can be resolved by normal users, however extreme situations such as vandalism acts should only lead to a report to an admin, who will take the appropriate decision. Wikia Terms of Use The Terms of Use apply to the entire Wikia network. They can be found here. Images The Wiki has some rules about uploading images. General Rules *Inappropriate content is not permitted; this can include pornographic images, aggressive content or unrelated content. Off-topic content is appropriate to use out of mainspace (such as personal user pages), as long as they don't fall under inappropriate content. Images for article use: *Must have an appropriate name to make them easy to find. For example, a screenshot of Aiden Pearce would have, as an appropriate name would be "AidenPearce-Screenshot.jpg", and not simply "Aidenpearce.jpg" or any name that might make searching for the file difficult. *Article images should only be Watch Dogs images, except in a few cases, where IRL images may be provided. *Sufficient quality is expected from media. Taking photos of the game on the TV should be avoided, as they tend to look horrible, and are of large size when uploaded. When taking images, make sure to have graphics option maxed out if possible, to enhance content quality. If you are unable to do so, you may post the image, but it may be replaced by a higher-quality file. Images for personal use: *Non-Watch Dogs content images that are intended to be used on a user's userspace must be used; unused personal files will be deleted. *Rules for size apply as well. In case a user uploads an image that violates this policy, an admin will be able to do the correct modifications (file renaming/deleting, etc.) and notify the user. Several violations of this policy may lead to a block. Article Editing Policies Watch Dogs Wiki is a wiki that can be edited by anyone/everyone. However, it is important that users follow certain policies when editing pages, in order to ensure article quality. Aside from vandalism, spamming, edit warring and others, there are also minor things that editors should avoid: Opinion Opinionated editing is not permitted on the Wiki. As a Watch Dogs encyclopedia, Watch Dogs Wiki is meant to provide articles describing the subject from a 100% neutral point of view. Articles are obviously not meant to contain opinion from the Wiki's users. Users that want to express their opinion about Watch Dogs-related content can do so, but it should be exclusive to userspace articles and/or user blogs or forums. Speculation While not completely prohibited, articles should not include speculation, or if they do, a minimal amount of speculation. This is because speculation is mostly opinionated; speculation is usually assumptions made by other users about the game, either on unreleased content or on parts of the game that are unclear. The only type of speculation that should be allowed include speculation that is obvious enough to come to anyone's mind, or backed up by sufficient in-game evidence. Talk Page Guidelines On the Watch Dogs Wiki, each page (article/file/template) possesses a talk page that users can use to discuss the subject. Notice that users do not have talk pages, and have message walls instead. The following is a list of guidelines that users should follow when editing a talk page. Topic Talk pages are exclusively used to discuss improvements that can be made to the article. Talk pages are not forums that users can use to discuss the subject of the article. Discussions about game subjects should be held exclusively at the . Talk pages used as forums will usually be deleted. Deletion Users are not allowed to remove messages from talk pages. This also applies to Message Walls. There are various reasons to keep former messages, these include preventing the same debate from happening again, or keeping a track of a user's contributions. There are a few exceptions, however, where users can remove messages: *Message was off-topic (e.g., as seen above, used as a forum) *Message was flaming/offensive/spam *Message was irrelevant/gibberish/nonsense/unnecessary General Rules Various rules apply to the use of talk pages/message walls. *Sign the end of your message(s). This can be done using four tildes (~~~~), or clicking the Signature button. If you spot an unsigned message, you may use at the end of the said message. *Be polite and civil when interacting with others. Offensive messages are not permitted. Be also mature. *When starting a new section/thread, be sure to title it with a proper title. This is to ensure different topics aren't mixed and unorganized. Civility Civility is an essential rule on the Wiki which concerns how users interact between each others. Editors should always endeavor to treat each other with consideration and respect. Even during disagreements situations, editors should behave politely, calmly and reasonably, in order to keep the focus on improving the wiki and to help maintain a pleasant editing environment. Any violation of our civility policy is considered as Incivility. Incivility has multiple forms, which can be personal attacks, insulting other users, rudeness, disrespectful comments, excessive profanity, terse or aggressive behaviours that disrupt the project and lead to unproductive stress and conflict. Such behavior will most likely lead to warning or a temporary block. Also, using policies in bad faith in an attempt to disrupt the flow of discussion and editing falls under incivility. Examples of such abuse: *Whether this is true or not, anyone can be "blamed" for edit warring. When someone keeps inserting false information into articles, he can be considered as a vandal, and the best thing to do is to report him instead of edit warring. *Vandalism is vandalism, regardless of what one may think or not of the subject. Harassment As a general rule, users should not take off-wiki matters here. What happens on another Wiki, stays on the said Wiki. Editors are as such unadvised to contact other users active here for an off-wiki matter. Depending on the circumstances, doing so may fall under Harassment. Examples of harassment: * As an "act of revenge", users may find a user on this Wiki to insult them or argue with them over an off-wiki matter. This form of behavior is strictly forbidden and will most likely lead to a block. * Users that have been blocked by an admin might find the blocking admin here to discuss the block. Though not considered as proper harassment, users shouldn't discuss blocks on any wiki except the Community Central. Users doing this might be asked to discuss any block on a proper space (such as the Community Central), or even blocked if the discussion turns to proper harassment (i.e. the user repeatedly messaging the concerned user). What happens on another Wiki, stays on the said Wiki. There is no reason to bring problems for somewhere else here. The Community Central Wiki can be used as an alternative to discuss off-wiki issues such as blocks, among others. If an editor is not interested in discussing off-wiki matters here, don't reiterate. Harassment is an offense that may lead to a block. Vandalism Vandalism is a regular form of policy violation encountered on various Wikis. Vandalism involves one or several users to edit one or more pages and do the following actions: *Removing large quantities of content from pages with no clear explanation. *Bad content: This includes changing the language of a page (Watch Dogs Wiki is in English only), inserting stupid crudities or random text into articles. *Adding "offensive material" - including swearing, offensive comments, racism, homophobia and pornography. This covers any form of content (whether text, links, images, video or audio) that our Administrators deem to be offensive. *False content: Adding deliberately misinformative information. Speculation should be clearly stated to be speculation when it occurs. **Fanon: Users that would like to create fanon content are allowed, however it should be done only on the user's userspace (can be done by creating a page named "User:Username/Pagename"; for a user named X who would like to create a page named Y, the page name would be User:X/Y). Vandalism is considered as a serious issue. Though inserting fanon may lead to a simple notice, deliberately altering the content of an article for malicious purposes will lead to a warning/block being issued. Advertising Advertising, in any form, is forbidden. Users may advertise anything through different means: * Spamming an article with hyperlinks * Creating a forum thread to advertise * Advertise on users' message walls Users advertising will be most likely indefinitely blocked. There are a few exceptions, however, about advertising: * User's profile on YouTube/another wiki: Can be done on the user's userpage * Facebook/Twitter profile: Can be provided on the user's Wikia profile (which shows up on all Wikia) * Personal website: On personal userpage as well Edit Warring Edit Warring is a situation where users repeatedly revert the edits of another user (e.g., user X undo an edit by user Y because he disagrees, then Y undo X's edit, then X undo Y, etc.). Edit warring is unconstructive and creates animosity between editors, making it harder to reach a consensus as to the right way to improve the wiki. Situations will inevitably arise where editors have differing views about some aspect of a page's content. When this happens, editors are strongly encouraged to engage in civil discussion to reach a consensus (this can be done either one of the contributors' message wall, or on the page's talk space), and not to try to force their own position by combative editing (making edits they know will be opposed) and repeated reverting. Not every potentially controversial edit, and not every revert, is deprecated as edit warring. The general solution to an edit war is to protect the page from editing for a certain duration (at least two weeks). In case a user witnesses an edit war, they are advised to properly talk to the concerned users and advise them to talk before edit warring. In case the situation does not come to an end, users can report the situation to an admin. Sysops are not forbidden from editing articles they've locked to prevent edit warring, but any edits to that article should be accompanied by either a talk page discussion or at least a detailed edit summary. Edit warring users may also be blocked. Multiple Accounts A core rule of the Wiki is that each user has only one account allowed on the Wiki. Users using more than account are violating the policy, and as such, will have their secondary account indefinitely blocked and their main account warned or blocked for a short period of time. *'Sockpuppetry': This is the most common form of abuse of multiple accounts. Sockpuppets are users that use another account to pretend to be someone else. The main goal of sockpuppetry is usually a "ban evasion", i.e. when a user had their main account blocked and uses a second account to edit the Wiki while the block is under effect. This may also involve swaying consensus. *'Shared Accounts': One account per user. Two or more users sharing a single account are not allowed. If any user needs to use a second account for any valid reason, they are kindly asked to inform an admin about it first. Usernames When editing the Wiki, users are asked to use a proper username. Unallowed usernames include: *Usernames containing profanity, either obscured or blatant, are disallowed, as are usernames intended to "attack". These usernames can contain unappropriate words such as insults, or racist/pornographic words. *Usernames similar to an already-used username on the Wiki are forbidden, to avoid confusion. Using an username of a Wikia staff member, or any username claiming affiliation with an organization, or claiming a position of authority on this or any other wiki is forbidden as well. *Usernames advertising something. *Usernames not containing English caracters (such as Russian/Arabic/Chinese caracters, etc.). These usernames are harder to search for. Users having an unacceptable username will be blocked indefinitely from the Wiki, but are still allowed to edit on this Wiki. To do so, the user must create a second account with an appropriate username (doing this will not count as a violation of the Multiple Accounts policy). As an alternative, they can also change their username and notify the blocking admin on their Community Central message wall to be unblocked. Ownership As part of the Wikia rules, ownership is not permitted on the Watch Dogs Wiki. Users do not have the right to claim the ownership of any page. When creating/editing a page, expect it to be edited by any user. Claiming the ownership of anything for various reasons can be related to Incivility. Ownership claiming may often happen during edit wars, with one of the editors claiming to own the page in order to provide an additional "reason" to continue reverting edits. Source When adding information to certain content pages (mainly about unreleased content), users may be asked to provide a source of where they got the information. Otherwise the information might be considered as incorrect and will be removed. Source is usually required when adding info about content that was not released yet. Valid sources include information officially released by Ubisoft, or any media (image/video) that might prove the information. Manual of Style Contributors are expected to follow our [[Watch Dogs Wiki:Manual of Style|'Manual of Style']] when editing. Leaked Info Publishing any information about upcoming features which was acquired through illegal means is considered as leaked and is not permitted, as it is considered as a copyright violation. When inserting information about upcoming content, users must provide a source (see above).